Browser-Based IDE
December 24th, 2009
CodeRun Studio is a browser-based IDE that currently handles PHP and ASP.NET. Frankly, I don’t get it: the only advantage I can see to doing development on a remote server via a browser is the ability to switch rapidly between platforms for testing purposes, but the same virtualization technology that makes that affordable also lets me switch between VMs locally. Several developers I work with already switch between Mac OS X, Windows, and Ubuntu Linux on their laptops as easily as I used to switch between virtual desktops, and if the GridCentric people have their way, doing so will become even easier. I had the same reaction to Bespin, so please: what am I missing?
Maybe for students? I could see the advantage of requiring them to have nothing more than a browser to access the programming environment.
Not saying I’m convinced just that it seems like a possible use case.
I’ve only played with Bespin, but the killer feature there is collaborative coding. The fact that you can work with someone on something in real time in the editor.
The other advantages come into things like how Bespin allows you to embed the editor as a ui widget. Look at things like the Palm Ares dev platform using a nice code-like editor for it’s platform. That’s interesting imo.
Developing on netbooks? Considering that bespin could be integrated into a bugtracker and versioning system that it can sit close to both the developent and production systems and can be made to support concurrent editing it seems like a practical solution for a lot of problems.
Of course it’s not for everybody.
Devoloping in a browser makes sense for javascript. It will make the line between debugging (say in firebug) and rewriting slicker (errors can jump to where you are in the code). Mozilla is making its plugins (jet pack) runnable bits of javascript, so its doubly useful to have a fully featured editor in the browser.
For other languages it would only make sense if its realtime sharing so you can pair program remotely with easy setup.
Saying that I could not do without my vim keybindings.
As budgets become squeezed trying to make hardware from 3 years ago work with the latest release of Visual Studio is not a fun exercise. Perhaps a cloud based IDE would provide an affordable alternative.
@chris Call me cynical, but if people start putting their IDE engines in the cloud, I’m sure Java and C# will grow to require a server farm to compile them